"The Historian" wrote in message
...
On May 10, 11:31 am, Mike Murray wrote:
On Sat, 10 May 2008 09:34:49 -0400, "Chess One"
wrote:

... I discovered that Ken Sloan
could offer no explanation for the complete absense of quality control
at
USCF's rating department which permitted the situation, and secondly,
that
those who proposed Tanner's award for a master title also couldn't spot
the
cheat.

Phil confuses quality control with fraud detection.

'Confuses?'

Doesn't lack of control data quality actually permit fraud? In this
instance, not only was there no quality control whatever, but an award was
made to a politico for what Mike Murray prefers to call 'fraud'.

For the first issue, clearly Tanner is responsible, but USCF's ratings
department is /as/ responsible, since after all, if you keep geting rated by
chess officials, can you be doing anything wrong?

But the 'fraud', as Murray terms it, is the reponsibility of the 'awards'
system. Not only for Tanner, but for the gent writing to in the NY Times
about getting his own award, with no apparent invigilation whatever - no
questions, no data = master title and rating floor.

What Murray wants below is for the public to invigilate the ratings of
others - rather than officials - but hedoes nothing at all to challenge Ken
Sloan or USCF about why it ain't so.

When I suggested that another ratings agency did exactly this, allow public
access to very much broader data on ratings [and much cheaper] - people
cried it down here.

Do even //paid// chess officials have any responsibilty? Apparently not.

Can unpaid chess politicos casually over-rule them and 'overlook' playing
records entirely [as in both examples above], thus deliberately engaging in
what Murray call's 'fraud'? Apparently so.

I remember Randy Bauer using that as his main plank in the election - what
is known elsewhere as competency testing. And what has Bauer done while in
office in terms of ratings? Apparently nothing.

Phil Innes


The best guard
against the latter is free and open public access to rating and event
history, and an open forum for members' questions and comments about
what appear to be ratings anomalies (named or otherwise, Phil, heh,
heh, heh).

Phil's prattle about QC vis-a-vis titles is ironic, given his aid,
comfort and general flackery in favor of questionable claims by one
well known USCF board member.

Leaving aside his own well-known claims to being "nearly an IM", of
course, and his alleged 2450 rating.